Edward M. Luby
Associate Professor
Office: HUM 565
Office Hours for Spring 2010: Thu by appt, 1-4PM
Phone: (415) 338-3163
Email: emluby@sfsu.edu
Dr. Edward M. Luby teaches courses in the Museum Studies curriculum on museum governance, museum administration and management, cultural heritage preservation, NAGPRA, fundraising, and cultural property issues.
Dr. Luby was formerly Associate Director of the Berkeley Natural History Museums, a consortium of campus museums with over 100 staff members across 7 separate institutional entities: Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, UC Museum of Paleontology, Essig Museum of Entomology, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, UC Botanical Garden, University and Jepson Herbaria, and the California Biodiversity Center.
While at Berkeley, Dr. Luby developed and implemented research and educational initiatives, managed and advised staff, supervised regulatory compliance for collections, and conducted independent and collections-based research. He has generated substantial funds from private and governmental sources to support digitization of archives, field station development, research equipment, collections research, collections preservation and storage, dating of collections, documentation of Native American collections, conference funding, employment of museum scientists and preparators, and development of K-12 initiatives.
Prior to his position as Associate Director, Dr. Luby was Special Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, Berkeley, and Director of the NAGPRA Unit for the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley. He supervised the university's compliance with the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the employment and training of up to 15 staff and numerous students, and worked with Native groups in California and elsewhere in the U.S. on the repatriation of cultural items and human remains. Dr. Luby also taught courses at UC Berkeley on museum studies, curation, and cultural property issues. In 1997, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Award from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California at Berkeley.
Dr. Luby received his BA (Biology and Anthropology) from the University of Rochester, and his MA and PhD (Anthropological Sciences) from Stony Brook University, New York. His area of expertise is archaeology with field research in both North America (California and Mexico) and the Middle East (Syria and Iraq). He has published in North American Archaeologist, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Biblical Archaeology Review, Journal of Archaeological Science, Proceedings of the Society for California Archaeology, California Anthropologist, as well as in several books on the prehistory of California, archaeology of Iraq, and archaeological method and theory. He has also presented numerous scholarly papers at the annual meetings of the Society for American Archaeology, American Anthropological Association, World Archaeological Congress, Society for California Archaeology, and the American Oriental Society.
Dr. Luby’s most recent publications include “More than One Mask: The Context of NAGPRA for Museums and Tribes,” (in press, in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, with co-author Melissa Nelson); “Maintaining Relationships with Native Communities: the Role of Museum Management and Governance” (in Museum Management and Curatorship, 22(3): 265-285, 2007, with co-author Elizabeth Scott); "Shell Mounds and Mounded Landscapes in the San Francisco Bay Area: An Integrated Approach" (in the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, Volume 1: 191-214, 2006, with co-authors Clayton D. Drescher and Kent G. Lightfoot); and “A Survey of World War II-Era Provenance Research in American Art Museums” (in Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, Volume 1 (4):365-80, 2005, with co-author Meagan Miller).
Dr. Luby's most recent funding includes a multi-year, collections-based project for graduate student training with Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park (Richmond, CA), Pinnacles National Monument (Monterey/San Benito counties, CA), and Yosemite National Park (with Professor Linda Ellis). In 2004, he received funding from the National Science Foundation for a multi-year project with Professor Kent Lightfoot of UC-Berkeley to conduct a variety of technical analyses of a museum collection excavated from a key Bay area shell mound more than 90 years ago. With Professor Melissa Nelson of San Francisco State University’s Department of American Indian Studies, Professor Luby also received funding from the National Park Service in 2004 to conduct a training workshop.
Finally, among Dr. Luby’s most recent papers or lectures are “The Production of Mounded Landscapes by Hunter-Gatherers: A Perspective from San Francisco Bay, California” (by Kent G. Lightfoot, Edward M. Luby, and Lisa Pesnichak), presented at the Society for American Archaeology annual meetings in Vancouver, B.C., March, 2008; "Cultural Property and Museums," part of the "Conversations on Museums" Program at the Judah L. Magnes Museum, in Berkeley, April, 2007; “Outdoor Museums: The Current Trends,” presented at the National Association for Interpretation Region 9 Workshop, held at the Fort Ross Historical Park in May, 2005; and “The Context of NAGPRA,” presented at the Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, in January, 2005. Dr. Luby has also been a member of several, Bay area museum committees, including those at the California Academy of Sciences, the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society, and the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley.
